


Paradigm Shift

by Decaykid



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23477044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decaykid/pseuds/Decaykid
Summary: As Billy watches her fall apart on his bed, watches as she is breaking in the way that he is already broken, by not one but both her parental figures, people that are supposed to love and protect her, he’s reminded of when he was her age, yelling, pleading into the telephone, “why did you leave me here? We did you leave me here with him?” He remembers the ache of that a pain, a terrible pain, a pain that no child should have to go through.He does for her what no one did for him, and he wraps his arms around her.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 6
Kudos: 78





	Paradigm Shift

**Author's Note:**

> The Forbidden™️ character development between Max and Billy between S2 and S3 The Duffers won't let us see. >:/

Everything changes between Max and Billy when she bursts into his room one night in complete hysterics, crying with body racking sobs and she throws herself into his bed where he had been casually lounging just seconds before. He’s trying to wrap his mind around the fact she just barged into his room, and she’s heart-brokenly distressed, and why did she come to him?? Then she starts yelling.

“I hate her! I hate her so much! I hate her f-for… for m-m marrying that m-monster!! He’s evil! An evil m-monster!!”

His stomach drops and his heart leaps up into his stomach. His body starts to tremble as fear, adrenaline and rage that slowly pulls at and unravels up brings to course through his veins. A single, echoing thought blares through the sirens in his head.

_did he hurt you did he hurt you did he hurt you_

“What happened? What did he do?” He asks, edge in his tone, but he’s wound way too tightly and way to quickly to try and make himself sound soft and inviting.

Max doesn’t seem to care either way.

From what he can gather between sobs and hiccups is that she was in the living room watching a show when Neil joined her, but he changed the station. When she said she had been watching the show he changed, he’d replied to her, “ _who do you think you’re talking to like that, you little fucking bitch.”_

It wasn’t just his words, it was the way he had said it to her, so angry, so full of venom and hate, as though she had caused him harm. It all just through her by surprise, his unadulterated, unfiltered, raw anger… and at what? What had she done to warrant that??

As Billy watches her fall apart on his bed, watches as she is breaking in the way that he is already broken, by not one but both her parental figures, people that are supposed to love and protect her, he’s reminded of when he was her age, yelling, pleading into the telephone, “ _why did you **leave** me here? We did you leave me here with **him**?_” He remembers the ache of that a pain, a terrible pain, a pain that no child should have to go through.

He does for her what no one did for him, and he wraps his arms around her.

“I know,” he says, “I know, I know, I know.” And _fuck_ , his voice cracks on those two little words, those two little words bare the weight not just of solidarity, not just of acknowledgment and acceptance, but a confession, one he’s buried deep within himself after the only support he’s ever known walked out on him at the age of nine.

“I know.” He says, and his own tears begin to fall as he wraps is arms just a little tighter around Max. He knows all too well, too damned intimately, that broken feeling that weighs heavy on your chest where the insecurities and internalized hate lies, always thinking it’s your fault, if you weren’t too… if you hadn’t have… if you could only… then maybe he could love you, and the two of you could be happy.

After seventeen years, Billy still hasn’t found a way to please him.

“I know.” He says, and they’re both crying, together, and now she’s hugging him too, and he isn’t sure who is holding who, who is comforting who, because he’s suddenly that scared, hurt and confused little child again, the one he thought died. For the first time in his life, he feels seen. For first time in his life, he can share this awful burden of the dark reality he lives. For the first time in his life, someone understands.

He just wishes it wasn’t like this.

She feels so small in his arms.

He breaks the hug, moves away to place his hands on her shoulders, he gives her a level look and for a moment he wonders if he was ever that small, so tiny and fragile looking, but he can’t recall ever really being a child; beatings and screaming matches hardened out his edges a long time ago.

“Look at me Max,” he says as she futilely tries to wipe her own tears away, “I’ll never let him lay a finger on you. Do you understand? He’s never going to hurt you.”

Max feels the tears well hit again, feels them slipping down her cheeks. Unable to speak, she nods instead.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting from Billy when she burst into his room. Her whole world got turned upside down when Neil has yelled those awful words at her. She knew she couldn’t talk to him, or go to her mom… no, her mom never seems to understand Max whenever she had a complaint or grievance about Neil, it was always “listen to your father”. Even if Billy has yelled and cussed and slammed his door in her face, that would’ve given her some semblance of normalcy in the wake of what had transpired in the living room.

Her brother had welcomed her in her despair with open arms.

The house, she thinks, suddenly feels a little less lonely.

Gone are the days of Billy redirecting his hate and frustrations at his sister. He spent a lot of long sleepless nights thinking about all the times he threatened and hurt her and thinking how he felt about his father when she was her age, scared, hurt and angry. He just can’t do that to her anymore, not after that moment they had in his bedroom, not after that moment of self awareness, of clarity. Something had changed between them then, something deep, something understood, something unspoken.

Nothing had changed between he and his father.

It’s a late Saturday morning. With their parents being gone and cartoons being over, Max is sitting on the living room couch with a magazine, skipping over articles in favor of ogling pictures of cute celebrities instead. Billy is rummaging around the kitchen, and while he’s quiet, there’s a danger to his movement, like a rubber band that’s been pulled tight and on the verge of snapping.

She understands him now, she thinks. His volatile moods used to seem to random to her, like the changing of the winds. They’d come and go like thunderstorm, releasing fury and might, and then they were gone.

She saw the bruise on his face when he came out his room this morning.

She heard the yelling last night, late into the night.

Billy must’ve gotten home late, later than curfew.

Billy and Neil yelling isn’t new. They’ve been getting into screaming matches and heated arguments for as long as Max has known them. Her mother never tried to intervene. “ _That’s your son_ ,” she’d say, “ _you raise him how you see fit_.” Max always thought things would be better, for Billy and the family, if he would just do what he’s supposed to do an follow the rules. But Max learned first hand that there are no rules with Neil.

The bruises aren’t new either, but the bruises are different.

No one talks about the bruises.

Max never understood, the bruises seem to show up out of nowhere. She always assumed Billy was getting into fights at school, which was partially true, but not the case every time.

She looks up when he hears a drawer get stuck, watches as he slides it back open, tries to shut it only for it to get stuck on the rails again.

“Piece of shit.” He grinds out between gritted teeth as he hits it with the heel of his hand, trying to force it shut.

Now she knows, the bruises and his moods, they coincide with one another.

But there’s something else she doesn’t understand…

As Max watches Billy struggle with the drawer, now unable to get it open or closed, she thinks of the one time Neil yelled at her, thinks of how she felt- how everything was too much all at once, and she thinks about how she couldn’t hold it all in. All the hurt, the confusion, the shock, the anger, it just came pouring out of her. She was like a cup full of water, and he was like a pot, and he dumped his water all over her, and then she was overflowing too. But all this time, for all these years, Billy just … held it in.

As Billy continues his loosing battle with the drawer, beating it with his fist to no avail, Max asks with the brutally open honesty that only a child is capable of, “why don’t you cry about it?”

In that moment, Billy knows she isn’t talking about the drawer. He knows she isn’t insinuating some playground insult, like when you complain to a friend and get a “go cry to your mom about it” in turn.

He’s felt vulnerable before: in those long nights after his mother left, when he’s pinned down beneath his father, fists relentless, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth, but this, this is something else entirely. He’s never felt so transparent, so splayed open, like a book.

He hits the drawer with increasing force, and her words are echoing in his head, and the drawer isn’t moving anywhere, and his face is still sore where Neil had bashed him into the tabletop, and if this fxcking drawer doesn’t _move_ he’s going to have answer for why he broke a piece of furniture in the house and out of all the people he’s ever had contact with in his life, in both California and Indiana, Max is the only who _sees_ him.

Something inside him gives way, and he slams his fist into the counter.

What is he supposed to say to her?

He’s trembling, Max’s innocent question has shaken him to his core. He reaches out, grabs a hold of the counter to steady himself.

She’s still looking at him, patient and expecting, even as he lets the silence drag on in discomfort as he fights the meltdown he’s on the verge of having.

“What’s the point?” He says at last, because he doesn’t have an answer. He’s not sure at what point he stopped crying about it, probably around the time he learned he gets punished no matter what he does. It doesn’t matter if he obeys, rebels, cries, screams, stays quiet, Neil will find something to be angry about.

Max quietly considers his words. After a moment of heavy consideration, Max sets her magazine aside, then sliding off the couch she walks to were Billy stands in the kitchen, hand still perched on the countertop before him as he leans forward. Wordlessly, and without eye contact, she wraps her arms around him. Initially Billy stiffens beneath the embrace, his instinct is to push her away, take a step back and ask what the hell she thinks she doing……

except he _knows_ what she’s doing.

The comfort, the embrace. It’s not something he’s accustomed to. They stay like that in a drawn out silence, Billy still leaning against his hand perched upon the counter top, Max with her arms around Billy’s abdomen, her head against his chest. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to feel, what he should say. He isn’t even sure what exactly it is Max is expecting.

Then he takes a breath in, and suddenly he feels like a Jenga Tower that had the incorrect block slide out of place. His breath gets caught in his throat. Something in his chest collapses as he gasps.

It’s a single, soft sob, but it’s enough to make Billy’s body tremble as he struggles to regain control… control of what, he isn’t sure.Slowly the tears begin to fall.

“I hate you,” he says quietly, to hide the shake. Max wraps her arms tighter around him, and despite his seemingly harsh declaration, he returns the embrace.

“You hate everyone,” she says, and there’s an unspoken, ‘ _including yourself_ ’ behind it.

But she can help him, help him unlearn the hate, and anger. She can help him get out of this. Together, they can survive this household.


End file.
